My middle lower grill on my front bumper (not kidneys, the one between the fog lights) has been popping out and clips were coming lose and it was looking ghetto. Thus, I decided to do a bumper rebuild since many of my splash guard pieces were breaking and coming off too. I also decided to spray paint my ghetto grill black...which I thought looked pretty cool. But more importantly, with a bumper off...you can do lots of things...like MAKE RAM INTAKES THAT MOUNT INTO THE BUMPER!
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/10...Intake_011.jpg Everyone loves intake systems! Of course we all know they offer 0-very little gains on our engines but we all love them because they are cheap, we can make them ourselves, and it sounds like we are experts because we did something we can hear when we drive! Everyone hates dropping money for a mod when you can't even tell it's there afterwards...but intakes can be heard! So today, I got bored, and when I get bored, I like to play around with car parts and my intake has been bugging me lately.
I have had just about every intake thinkable from the stock airbox, K&N drop in filter, the debaffled airbox, the fogged airbox, the Cosmo Racing cold air intake, the modified Cosmo Racing Cold Air Intake (my very own creation), a short pipe intake, etc...
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/753/medium/photo6.jpg http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/753/medium/photo2.jpg http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/753/photo1.jpg My personal favorite was my Modified Cosmo Cold Air Intake which worked splendid and had every benefit and none of the cons...except one: finding a replacement filter for it!
My original filter was damaged, and I could not find the exact same filter anywhere. That posed a problem because the filter was only about 4 inches in diameter and fit in the engine bay nicely. Cosmo Racing sent me a replacement filter which ended up being about 7 inches in diameter and didn't fit into the fender/foglight area where I wanted it. Thus, I ended up sticking it up on a short pipe where it sucked in hot engine air until I figured something else out...and HERE IT IS!
I still couldn't find the right replacement filter for my modified cosmo intake, so I went to Autozone and got the smallest cone type filter I could find (not counting the tiny filters for breather hoses of course). It was still too big to go down behind the fog light easily, but I could turn it into a very effective short ram air intake type thing. Short ram air intakes need 2 things: 1) heat shield, 2) duct work to route air.
The contours of the engine bay make it obnoxious to fabricate a custom heat shield, so I thought "Hey...plastic has a low thermal conductivity, and the stock airbox is made of plastic...and it fits the contour of the area nicely!" Thus, I made a heat shield by taking the lower portion of the airbox and cutting the front wall off. It is tough to cut through this thing, but I used the connect the dots method: drill a bunch of holes along where you want to cut and connect them! I had to use bolt cutters to chip off the plastic from dot to dot but it wasn't too bad. The plastic was very brittle so it snapped off easily. It blocks the engine air nicely, but the expansion tank on the radiator is still exposed...oh well!
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/10...Intake_003.jpg For duct work, there are many options. You can route hosing from the middle grill, the brake duct, or the fog light. Based on an AutoSpeed.com article, they found the best place for ram air ducts are behind the fog light on their car (based on differential pressure readings). I figured it would probably be similar on a 318ti.
http://autospeed.com/cms/title_RamAi...4/article.html I used the stock snorkel as a funneling device. It sits almost perfectly in the fog light opening. First, I trimmed off the ridiculously long cone. Using three screws, I tacked the funnel on each side and one on the bottom edge of the opening. I then used some 3" flexible plastic tubing from AutoZone and attached it to the end of the snorkel. The tubing is flexible and keeps form so you don't need to worry about attaching it at the top. I routed it straight up to sit next to the air filter. Sadly, I did not trim the snorkel down enough so the piping interfered with the brake duct and I had to cut a section out of the duct to make it all fit together...but if I had cut down the snorkel enough, it would have been ok.
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/10...Intake_007.jpg http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/1015/Intake_009.jpg http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/10...Intake_012.jpg More importantly, I was pleased with the results. Not that I could notice a crazy power gain, but it sounded good, and it was quicker than it used to be! Of course, this is given the fact that my car had been driving pretty bad and a new crankcase vent valve had been replaced to get my CEL to go away! But it was still cool!
Final Product:
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/10...Intake_018.jpg Gallery:
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/showgal...015&ppuser=492 And yes, it was a long post!